Tourists in Iceland bought just over 1.9 million overnight stays through websites similar to AirBnB in 2017. Additionally, there were approximately 850,000 overnight stays of foreign tourists where payment for stay was not required. Thereof, overnight stays in cars where payment was not required (i.e. outside of official campsites) were estimated to be 520,000 in 2017, and an estimated 330,000 nights were spent by foreign tourists at friends and relatives, through house swapping, couch surfing or other non-payment means. About 50% of overnight stays of foreign tourists in 2017 were in hotels or guesthouses, and 19% at private accommodation brokering through AirBnB and similar websites. Unpaid accommodation accounted for approximately 8.5% of overnight stays of foreign tourists in 2017. These estimates are based on results from an ongoing border survey at Keflavík International Airport and Statistics Iceland’s data on registered overnight stays.
In the first three months of 2018, total overnight stays of tourists through AirBnB and similar websites were 307,000 and unpaid overnight stays of foreign tourists were 63,000. Statistics Iceland will henceforth publish the total number of paid overnight stays of tourists, and the number of unpaid overnight stays of foreign tourists, on a monthly basis. Numbers for April 2018 will be published at the end of May. Work on the breakdown of overnight stays through AirBnB and similar websites by regions is ongoing.
VAT-turnover of AirBnB accommodation 14.7 billion ISK in 2017
The income of accommodation establishments registered through AirBnB was 14.7 billion ISK in 2017, which was a 25% increase from 2016, when it was 11.8 billion ISK. These numbers are based on VAT registrations to the Directorate of Internal Revenue, according to the law on VAT (Act 50/1988).
| Table 1. VAT-turnover in accommodation 2014-2017 | ||||
| million ISK | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 |
| VAT-turnover of hotels and guesthouses | 51,890 | 62,516 | 85,242 | 94,345 |
| VAT-turnover through AirBnB¹ | 2,503 | 5,524 | 11,803 | 14,697 |
| ¹Part of VAT-turnover is included in VAT-turnover of hotels and guesthouses, the extent of which is unknown. | ||||
Previously published data based on web scraping methods through AirDNA has indicated that the turnover of accommodation establishments providing services through AirBnB amounted to 19.4 billion ISK in 2017 and 9.3 billion ISK in 2016. This increase is not supported by Statistics Iceland’s data based on VAT-turnover, which it deems the most reliable source on revenue created by accommodation establishments providing services through AirBnB.